Michael Warren

Why Blue?

Why Blue? A sometimes complicated but for me very simple question to answer. Born in Ancoats, my dad took me to my first game when I was about five. I am afraid that, unlike many, I have no idea whom City were playing or indeed what year it was but it must have been around 1959/60. Dad, who was in the record league ground crowd of 84,569 at Maine Road in 1934, was one of those ‘true football fans’ who, although a big City fan, used to go to Maine Road one week and the Swamp the next with my Rag uncle. Fortunately dad never encouraged me to become in any way involved with the dark side.

Unfortunately, in the early days of attending matches I didn’t see that much football played. Couldn’t see because I was too short? Not exactly. Truth is I was so in love with City from the start that if the opposition scored first I would put my head down and ask dad to tell me when City equalised because I couldn’t stand to see them losing.

We moved out to the Stockport area (a Blue stronghold as Hoppy would say) when I was quite young, probably because our street in Ardwick was just about ready for demolition. Dad started to work on Saturdays so that was the end of me going to Maine Road for a while. He would take me to the odd game but couldn’t get tickets for the Cup Final of 1969 despite trying his best. I did however, manage to get one for the League Cup Final the next year courtesy of a teacher at school (Stockport School popularly known as Mile End). Trouble was it was in the West Brom end. When I was the only one around to cheer and wave my scarf when Mike Doyle equalised (I was past the ‘head down’ bit by this time) and a skinhead descended upon me; I managed to be so pathetic whimpering “I’m sorry. I’m only supporting my team” that he didn’t even hit me.

By this time I was playing Saturday mornings for the school (same team bus as Alan Gowling although he was several years ahead of me) and Saturday afternoon in the YOC league. Soon after it was Sunday mornings as well for Mile End Albion in the Stockport Sunday league. I carried on playing Saturdays and Sundays until the late 70s. Do I regret doing that rather than going to MR? Probably a bit, but I did enjoy playing and you only have your youth once. Besides if I hadn’t got that exercise I might now be as fat as some of my contemporaries. Anyway, eventually I ‘retired’ from Saturday football and became a season ticket holder on the Kippax with my mates Chris, Gary and Dave. I saw every game in the 1981 Cup run (including both finals at Wembley) and the Blues go top of the old First Division courtesy of Tricky Trev’s wondrous blast against Wolves on 28th December 1981, before departing for foreign parts in 1982.

If I thought that I was not as close to the team as I would have liked when I was playing football (although of course I had the MuEN, MotD, evening games etc), I was to get a shock living abroad for the first time. Initially I was restricted to checking for City’s result in the Monday morning edition of Bermuda’s Royal Gazette since telephone calls were bl**dy expensive due to the Cable and Wireless monopoly. After several years one of the handful of local radio stations (the one TV station at the time didn’t show any football) started to carry the BBC World Service which meant that at least we got the results live on a Saturday. With the advent of satellite we were eventually to get live games although it meant going down to the Robin Hood pub and starting to drink earlier on a Saturday than I would have done normally (something that has stayed with me I am afraid). I generally tried to get home for Christmas so at least I would usually make one or two games especially if we were playing a ‘local’ away game (e.g. Stoke). Nobody in Bermuda really understood why I had an inflatable banana there. It would be even tougher to understanding why I went to Stoke that Boxing Day in 1988 (oh my God is it 11 years ago?) dressed in full prison inmate gear (boiler suit with arrows) with a full head gorilla mask. However I am sure that there would have some degree of amusement seeing us thumbing a lift back to Stockport (still in full gear and mask with banana) after Hoppy (the man with the world’s worst sense of direction) had taken us exactly the opposite way to where the van was parked and we got left behind (if they’re reading this, thanks to the people who gave us a lift by the way). I am sure dad would have been looking down on us shaking his head in disbelief at our antics as he had died suddenly just before that Christmas.

In Dec 1990 I took my girlfriend to Forest with the lads. Chris and Gary taught her to sing ‘In 1962 me lads, we went to Division 2… etc.’ and I was hooked. We were married 18 months later. Five years ago we moved to the USA to a sleepy town in Connecticut called Redding (hence the BV name) and I was immediately back to square one as far as TV coverage was concerned. By this time the wife had bought me a short wave radio so I could still listen to the World Service which I continue to do. It was on this that I listened to us go down against Liverpool and Stoke. At least for the past couple of years we have had a Premier League highlights programme on cable here. Typically of course City must have known this was coming and conspired not to be in the Premier just so I couldn’t see them regularly.

And finally (thank God I hear you groan) to the present. It is amazing what a difference the Internet has made to being able to follow the club, especially for the overseas fan. Not only can I keep up to date with everything going on at the club on a daily basis but I can see the goals (thanks to Ian Simons) and have met many fellow Blues both on BV and subsequently in the flesh. I can also ‘commune’ with Blues on match days on ICQ and listen to the unbiased commentary of Gary Owen on the official site on the occasions when the Planet service is actually working. But I don’t think it’s solely because of the Internet that I am wrapped up in the club more than ever. Maybe it’s just me getting carried away from a distance but I think it is something to do with the atmosphere surrounding City at the moment. It helped being there the day we turned the corner against Stoke on 28th December ’98 (is it only 16 months ago and is there something slightly mystical about that date?) with Bongs and Chris. All of us thought that we were going to have to have a good drink afterwards to get over yet another disappointment when the boys came out in the second half and put on a performance from which they don’t seem to have looked back. This was followed by the trouncing of Fulham a couple of weeks later and we were on our way. I was also lucky enough to get back for the weekend with the Beaver (a Salford Blue who lives in the same town as me here) for Wembley; a day which will stay with me for the rest of my life.

Despite living some three and a half thousand miles away I am now a season ticket holder in the Platt Lane (the wife thinks I’m a nutter but didn’t try and stop me bless her) and will attend my tenth league match of the season this Saturday against Tranmere (a fact much admired by good old ChinnorBLU). Although I can’t make the Brum match because I am travelling on business; I have just booked to come back for the weekend against Blackburn. Hopefully I will be able to get a ticket and we’ll have a reason to party. I only wish the close season was longer to give me more time to save up.

The two people I feel sorry for in all this are my daughters. At the ages of three and four they have been able to sing “We love you City, we do…” for some time and have been wearing City kits for longer (as evidenced in the programme for the Leeds game). They will be going with me to MR as soon as possible and will have no choice but to follow the fortunes of the best club in the world with the greatest fans because it’s in their blood as it was in mine.

I apologise that this has gone on so long (not quite as much as Wheelie’s ramblings perhaps but too long anyway). The fact is I can’t sleep at the moment because I’m nervous about the Grimsby game on Saturday (of course by the time you read this you will know it was either another step on the way back to the promised land or one of those slips which we have come to expect from City – hopefully it was the former) and was in the office at 6am writing this as therapy.

In closing I would like to thank some people. Firstly Ashley and his colleagues for all the work they do in making this newsletter compulsive reading twice a week. Next Hoppy, Bongs and Chris for all the running around they do to and from Maine Road (and Huddersfield, Port Vale etc.) when I am ‘home’. And finally my long suffering wife Amanda who doesn’t give me cr*p every time I make a 7,000 mile round trip to watch a game of football.

First printed in: MCIVTA Newsletter #600 on